Assessing Four Paths Progression

Finally, now that they were alone below the starry sky in Yaan's temple gardens, the Fragment of Blood revealed his true intentions.

"As you are right now, your chances of passing the Heavenly Calamity are extremely slim, and your chances of passing the following tribulation are infinitesimally small. You may have accumulated a large amount of Life Essence, but your Heavenly Calamity will be powerful enough to destroy that Life Essence."

Yaan listened, but he thought differently.

"Blessing and calamity are actually equal without fail, are they not? There are only two reasons that people die to their Nirvana Death Heavenly Calamities. Firstly, they fail to absorb enough Life Essence from the blessing. Secondly, they lack the means to resist the calamity's power. Both scenarios result in their Life Essence being taken away with interest." Yaan said.

"Exactly." The red-haired man nodded, not refuting what he said. "And in your case, you have already failed on the first point since you did not absorb nearly enough from your Heavenly Blessing into your four cultivation paths. On the second point, your current abilities will result in you dying under the initial impact of the calamity; you will not even last for one tenth of a second."

Yaan remained silent, waiting for him to go on. They both knew that he possessed an absurd two million drops of Life Essence…yet the Fragment of Blood still claimed that this wasn't nearly enough Life Essence to get him through the calamity.

But Yaan wasn't so sure…after all, he was certain that somehow, for some reason, he had absorbed a massive amount of Life Essence into his Dao Soul, so maybe-

"The Life Essence absorbed into your Dao Soul will not help you in the Heavenly Calamity." The red-haired man interrupted Yaan's train of thought, as if reading his mind.

In truth, the Primordial Sage had already seen through the matter of Yaan's Dao Soul absorbing Life Essence. Something like this…had never happened before in the history of the four planes. It was shocking, incomprehensible, and impossible to explain…but it would be of no use to him during the calamity.

"If the Life Essence contained within your four partially-fused cultivations is depleted entirely, you will already be dead. If only your Dao Soul remains 'alive', that cannot be considered being alive; your body, soul, mind and Qi will all be dead, well and truly dead - that is not something you can recover from. If you fail to resist with those two million drops, you will die."

"What will happen to my Dao Soul at that point?" Yaan suddenly asked.

"The Dao Soul cannot remain in this world without being tethered to a living entity, so…you will be devoured by the Heavenly Dao."

After a moment of thinking, Yaan asked:

"Is there any way to access the Mortal Life Essence in my Dao Soul?"

"No. Previously, you only managed to find the path towards your Dao Soul because you became completely saturated with Life Essence, and in a moment of life and death crisis, you instinctively discovered the only possible route towards survival, by channelling the excess Life Essence into your Dao Soul. As you have probably realised, the Heavenly Dao actually attempted to kill you with that blessing…when it realised that it had failed, it immediately gave up."

Yaan felt surprised that the red-haired bastard was actually being so helpful! But, if what he said before was true, then it seemed that he really did want to help Yaan overcome his trials of Nirvana…

"So you're saying that unless I can find my Dao Soul, I will be unable to access that Life Essence?"

"I did not say that. Even if you find your Dao Soul, it will be useless. Life Essence is an inherent part of your life, and a cultivator's life is bound to their cultivation. Your Dao Soul's Life Essence is only able to give life to your Dao Soul…whatever that even means…"

So in the end, even this 9-Star Realm powerhouse with a vast understanding of many things was unable to understand the matter of Yaan's Dao Soul absorbing Life Essence.

Since that was the case, they needed to move on to the second point; the methods that Yaan would use to resist the Nirvana Death Heavenly Calamity.

The Heavenly Calamity would be equal in size to the Heavenly Blessing, but Yaan did not absorb more than one ten thousandth of the Heavenly Blessing into his partially-fused cultivations, meaning that the calamity would attempt to take away ten thousand times more Life Essence than he actually possessed!

Yaan needed to comprehend certain methods if he wanted to survive his impending calamity, but first of all, it was essential for him to fully understand the current state of his cultivation.

The matter of his 'partially-fused cultivations' was something that Yaan came to understand during the three days following his Heavenly Blessing. Since this was related to his potential failure and success in undergoing Nirvana Rebirth, he needed to take this matter very seriously. After all, the Nirvana Rebirth Immortal Ascension Tribulation always followed soon after the Nirvana Death Heavenly Calamity, so it was essential to prepare for this tribulation before undergoing the calamity.

After reaching Nirvana Life, a cultivator's cultivation path would undergo a change. For example, for body temperers, Nirvana Life meant partially fusing their Primal Soul into their Vital Core! After successfully completing the Immortal Ascension Tribulation, the Primal Soul would fully fuse into the core, but not only the core…it would also fuse into every single cell throughout their body!

For this reason, 7-Star Realm Immortal body temperers were able to completely recover from grievous injuries quite easily…in fact, so long as one drop of their blood remained, they could still make a full recovery with ease! If they possessed sufficient Life Essence to heal the injury, they could return to their peak condition within minutes!

As for Yaan, his situation was unique, even amongst Four Path Cultivation Technique practitioners. This was due to his slaughter variance, which was now engrained into all four of his cultivation paths!

This unexpected development provided him with a huge boost in strength, but the unforeseen benefit, was that it allowed his four paths to undergo a greater degree of fusion than would otherwise be possible. His path fusion was also progressed even further by the excessive absorption of Life Essence during his Heavenly Blessing. If a typical four paths fusion upon reaching Nirvana Life could be considered a 50% fusion between each path, then Yaan's attainment was closer to 75%!

His Vital Energy and his Qi had long since fully fused into Vital Qi, which was supported and generated by the outer layer of his dual-layered core. But now, the soul within his core had undergone a further fusion, as had the core itself…

His core's Vital Qi layer became a Vital Slaughter Qi layer, producing Vital Slaughter Qi! The Slaughter Force layer became a Vital Slaughter Force layer, holding his Vital Slaughter Soul!

A soul filled with vitality would usually be considered a Primal Soul, but since Yaan's soul had reached soul cultivation path's Imperial Spirit Realm, it did not turn into a Primal Soul, it was a unique Spirit Soul which possessed the attributes of vitality and slaughter!

But that was not the end. After all, there was still his Psyche Power to consider.

Fusing Psyche Power into the four paths could be considered the most difficult pursuit in the Four Paths Cultivation Technique. This fusion required such an immense quantity of Life Essence that there were no recorded cases of anyone succeeding in doing so…

Of course, perhaps someone had succeeded, but kept their success a secret. It was sensible for ordinary cultivators to keep their Nirvana ascensions hidden, not to mention those who had attained ridiculous achievements.

There were known cases of Four Paths Cultivation Technique practitioners reaching the Nirvana Life Realm and even the Nirvana Death Realm…but it was unknown whether or not anyone had actually succeeded in partially fusing all four paths when they stepped into Nirvana Life. It was more common to settle for a lower level of success, wherein they barely qualified to reach Nirvana Life. Of course, this resulted in their failure when it came to the Immortal Ascension Tribulation; it was a very well established fact that it was impossible to become an immortal via just two or three fused paths.

There was a single recorded case of a person who succeeded in partially fusing three paths, but they failed to integrate their Psyche Power into the fusion. That person passed their Nirvana Death Heavenly Calamity, but like all others before them, they were killed by their Immortal Ascension Tribulation.

Yaan successfully completed a partial fusion between all four paths during his ascension to Nirvana Life! Honestly, he believed that he had only managed to succeed due to his ridiculous Heavenly Blessing…

And the result?

The fusion that Yaan achieved, was the fusion of his Sea of Consciousness into his soul!

The Sea of Consciousness was a separate internal realm of the mind, a realm which could only be entered by consciousness itself, and also other forms of existence with this same ethereal nature. This included Psyche Power, and of course aura.

Before now, Yaan's Sea of Consciousness was a realm which overlapped with every other part of himself. It was not visible, it could not be seen or searched for, but it existed.

When he realised this, completing the fusion became simple. It was simple, but not easy; a vast amount of Life Essence was expended to complete this fusion during his Heavenly Blessing, but Life Essence was not something that Yaan lacked.

He chose to fuse his Sea of Consciousness into his soul for two reasons.

Firstly, the soul was a spiritual entity. It was not as ethereal as the Sea of Consciousness, but it was much more ethereal than the physical brain.

'Ethereal' was a word used to describe how abstract and incorporeal something was. Physical things were the least ethereal, then came energies such as Vital Energy. Qi was the most ethereal form of energy, causing it to require the support of the Dantian. The soul was far more ethereal than physical forms and energies since it was a spiritual entity. After the soul came the consciousness, Psyche Power and aura, followed by Life Essence, which was more ethereal than any form of cultivation. Finally, the most ethereal existence in this world…was dao. This included the Heavenly Dao, the earthly daos, the dao heart, and the Dao Soul.

Because they were the closest to one another in terms of their ethereal nature, Yaan chose to fuse his Sea of Consciousness into his soul, rather than his physical body or his Qi.

His other reason for choosing his soul, was because his soul resided in the centre of his core, which was now akin to the connection point between his four paths of cultivation. With his Sea of Consciousness residing within his soul, he was able to directly channel his Slaughter Power - his Slaughter Variant Psyche Power - into his soul! From there, he could channel his Slaughter Power into his core, where it was infused into his Qi and spread throughout his body!

This was the partial fusion that Yaan had achieved. Despite the high level of fusion, it could still only be considered a partial fusion, because he still possessed four distinct cultivation powers. Only after fusing all four cultivations into a single, new path, would they be considered fully fused. This fusion could only be achieved by passing the Immortal Ascension Tribulation, and at that point, Yaan would become the sole cultivator of the fifth major cultivation path in this world!

This was the reason that he had always been determined to walk the Four Paths Cultivation Technique, despite the clear difficulties.

Even though he definitely wanted this, Yaan couldn't help but think of something that had always bothered him…

The Primordial Devil once said that body tempering was the one true path. He believed that even if other paths were cultivated alongside body tempering, they should eventually be fused back into body tempering, elevating this single path to superior heights…

This was a belief that the Primordial Devil had always held, it was a belief engrained into his dao heart. And yet, Yaan did not agree with this sentiment. He felt no desire to follow the path that had long since filled the Primordial Devil's heart…

Once again, Yaan found himself feeling estranged from the Primordial Devil of the past.